The January 5, 2015, WordPress prompt is Daring Do: Tell us about the time you rescued someone else (person or animal) from a dangerous situation. How did you prevail?

As I groggily aroused myself from my mid-afternoon siesta my husband Monte rushed into the family room, retrieved his garden-soiled sneakers, and quickly slipped them on his feet.

“There’s a bird caught in the deer netting (around our garden),” he said, grabbing a pair of scissors. The grogginess disappeared with my adrenalin rush. I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my camera, and raced to the garden. Sure enough, there was a bird in the netting. A big bird.

“It’s an owl,” Monte said, hesitatingly moving towards it to examine the situation. The black netting was wrapped around the bird’s feet tightly enough that Monte might need a surgeon’s skill to cut it without injuring the bird. He poked it gently with the handle of the umbrella he’d grabbed on the way to the garden.

Still, he had to try. While using an umbrella handle to stabilize the owl he gingerly began snipping at the netting with pink-handled scissors. The owl, equally intimidated by us as we were of it, kept trying to reach its beak to where it could nip Monte’s hands.

My task was easier. Since I wasn’t going to risk the bird’s beak I stood back, waiting to offer Monte medical attention if it were necessary. And I studied the owl, wondering if it was one of the screech owls I kept hearing in the wee hours of the night—a noise that, when I initially heard it, made me want to call 911 to rescue whatever woman was being beaten. Then my trigger finger took hold as I attempted to shoot a prize winning photograph, which was difficult as I was repeatedly startled by the owl’s wildly flapping wings.

“Calm down,” I said—as if the owl could understand. However, it looked at me as if to say “what’s happening?” and calmed down somewhat.

After a harrowing ten minutes Monte freed the owl’s feet, but its beak-hold on the netting kept him trapped. It took a few minutes before it realized that if it loosened its grip it could free itself to leave. Standing back we watched it fly few feet. Its lift wasn’t high enough so it flew into the netting on the opposite side of the garden. We thought we would have to free it again, but this time, with a little trouble, it cleared the netting and flew into a tree and rested for a moment.

“It’s probably pretty exhausted,” Monte said as it opened its wings, gathered steam, and rose to become hidden by the trees.

The WordPress Weekly Writing prompt for September 2, 2014, encouraged me to write in a genre different than my usual—tanka, a cousin of haiku.

Traditional haiku is present tense, and captures a moment in time. It is a metaphor, not a simile, and has 3 non-rhyming lines containing a total of 17 syllables in a 5-7-5 line structure (lines 1 and 3 have 5 syllables, line 2 has 7 syllables).

Traditional tanka contains 5 lines and 31 syllables, in a 5-7-5-7-7 line structure, although it was noted that many contemporary poets take liberty with these specifics.

We were encouraged to write about something in our lives, perhaps in the past week. Below is my attempt.

Today is forth and final weekly installment of 7 poems I’m posting during April in recognition of National Poetry Month. Although I’m only a wannabe poet I’m sharing my collection of poems with you on each Tuesday this month. By the end of the month I’ll have shared 30 poems, equaling one per day for the month (in four installments). Note: the fourth week will include 9 a poems to cover the short week at the end of April.

Today is third weekly installment of 7 poems I’m posting during April in recognition of National Poetry Month. Although I’m only a wannabe poet I’m sharing my collection of poems with you on each Tuesday this month. By the end of the month I’ll have shared 30 poems, equaling one per day for the month (in four installments). Note: the fourth week will include 9 a poems to cover the short week at the end of April.

Poetry is not my genre. However, I play around with it, mostly when I’m a passenger in the car. I cull them from a list of odd rhyming words or words that relate to each other somehow.
I present the second installment of seven poems:

APRIL 8: WAITING FOR SPRING THAW

Frost nips the top of the golden corn stalks
Clouds burrow in the cleavage of the hills
Hillsides camouflage under misty white frost

APRIL 9: ICE FLOES

Smoke rises up the chimney flu
Merges with the air
Water flows through trenches
Merges with (more…)

April also has April Fool’s Day, Earth Day, and is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, National Pet Month. and

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH

Today is the first day of April, National Poetry Month. Although I’m only a wannabe poet I plan to gather my collection of poems to share with you on each Tuesday this month. By the end of the month I’ll have shared 30 poems, equaling one per day for the month (in four installments). Note: the fourth week will have four extra poems to cover the short week at the end of April.

Apple tree devoid of leaves but filled with apples Three crows sitting in the fork of branches of a leafless tree Duplex outhouse, broken down

When my husband Monte and I travel I often take pictures through the car’s front window or out my passenger-side window—open, weather permitting. Sometimes open even weather not permitting, when Monte complains about being frozen from the snippy breeze.

Even though we speed fifty to sixty miles an hour past the object of my photograph many of the pictures are pretty good. I use the sports setting on the camera, which catches the scenery as it whizzes by.

However, I cannot always predict what might make a good picture until it flies past. Too late. Picture lost.

This happened when my husband and I traveled to Winchester (Virginia) and Cumberland (Maryland).

Thus, I’m left to develop a written description of the pictures not taken. And to resort to free online clipart for illustrations.

Three ebony crows
Pause
In the forks of treeless branches
Tired from their search
For the sustenance
That allows them
To crow about their worth.

Duplex outhouse, broken down

Necessary house from days of yore
duplex style speaking of wealth.
I wonder what’s behind your broken down doors
with their boards now placed like pickup sticks
ready to fall apart upon being pried open.
What secrets are buried deep beneath your two-hole seats?
Discoomfort of cold cheeks?
Distress of illness shedding its evidence?
Privacy of your privy has primacy over family demands
offering refuge from (more…)

Good poetry aside, you might say “fins find fantastic food five times a day.”*

I took on the challenge, as a writer, to improve the poetry, although my genre is not poetry. However, the thought of creating a tongue twister is irresistible.

The initial poetry was excerpted from the article, 50,0000 King Salmon Come to Sodus Bay. The bay is located on Lake Ontario somewhere near Rochester, New York, according to my husband Monte. It was being stocked with fish to entertain sportsmen.

The wind was gusting at 40 mph and there was a brief white-out from some lake effect snow. Not the typical conditions for April 21st, however the 50,000 kings delivered to Sodus Bay appeared to be content as they were transferred from hatchery truck to net pens.

I wonder—how can you tell if a fish is content or not? I’ve visited the spillway at the Linesville State Fish Hatchery in Linesville, Pennsylvania, on Lake Pymatuning. The carp were several layers thick—thick enough that ducks walk on their backs. People stop to ogle them. Many feed them scraps of bread, torn from week-old loaves purchased cheaply at a shed, so they can watch them hungrily battle for their morsels. Somehow it reminds me of the concentration camps of World War II. This doesn’t speak of content to me.

Water temperature is critical to the transfer and Sodus Bay registered 43 degrees, while hatchery truck was 39 degrees…within the 10 degree window preferred by New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) biologists.

…Actually, they don’t have a complete set of fins. The rear dorsal has been clipped for future surveys. Biologists will use this information to see how far the salmon roam. But…they will have a steady meal, eating fish pellets five times a day.

Manna became boring to the Israelites. Do fish pellets become boring to the salmon? Maybe they, like the fish in Linesville, jump for morsels of bread to brighten up their diet.